


you can't imagine how i hate this

by ThisJoyAndI



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 06:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12742407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisJoyAndI/pseuds/ThisJoyAndI
Summary: (graceless)'Five images of his mother are all he has to offer Charlie.'





	you can't imagine how i hate this

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm a masochist, obviously, and because Charlie Shelby's "Mummy" broke my heart. 
> 
> Title from 'Graceless' by The National, which might be an obvious choice but is truly a wonderful song and deserving of a listen.

He keeps the meagre number of photos of Grace he has around purely for Charlie’s benefit. If it were only him, all alone in this grand house, Tommy would stash the photos away in a drawer somewhere and only take them out when he is feeling particularly melancholic – for he is unlikely to ever forget the curl of his wife’s hair, the quirk of her lips. But he had promised Charlie that he would keep everything the way it was, and so he has. The house is exactly the same as it was the night of the benefit, everything the way Grace left it. Her perfume bottles and combs are still perched on her vanity, her simple gold necklace gathering dust in the room they both foolishly thought wouldn’t just be Charlie’s nursery, most likely taken off after their son proved fascinated by it when Grace put him down for the night.

He doesn’t change anything, but rather, he takes care to accentuate Grace’s presence. He only has poor imitations and pretence, but they are all he has, and all he can offer Charlie. The family portrait he commissioned as a belated present for Charlie’s first birthday is joined by the portrait of Grace he had done as a surprise, a portrait Grace bemoaned made her look haughty. At the time, her words had merely been met with a quirked brow, Grace narrowing her eyes at his lack of protestation against such a statement and throwing a pillow half-heartedly at him. Now when he looks at it, he thinks she looks untouchable. 

_How he wishes that thought had proven true._

The snapshot of them in New York that Grace had made him pose for after easily convincing a stranger to photograph them, her head tilted towards him and his arm around her, will forever remain where she had placed it on her vanity. He will look at it every morning when he wakes, and the remnants of what could be considered a smile might cross his lips, but he will never be able to create the unadulterated happiness he had felt at the time.

The photograph of Grace, Charlie in her lap, still sits on his desk, in prime position. Whenever he is feeling lost, adrift, he looks at it and thinks – it _should_ have been me. It still angers him, years on, for Grace hadn’t done anything, hadn’t been guilty of anything besides being his wife. He was the one who gave the orders, the one who killed men as easily as breathing, and all Grace had wanted was for them to be safe.

The photograph of Grace as she was before he knew her, as she was when she just began working for Campbell, is placed in several places around the house. He likes the way Grace looks it in, unblemished by Campbell, by Birmingham, by his very own hands. He had tainted her, cursed her, from the moment he first met her and accused her of being a whore. But this photograph, that is the way he wants Charlie to remember his mother, so the copy he had made of that photograph for the opening of the institute now resides in Charlie’s bedroom, for Grace had always liked to watch their son fall asleep, to make sure he was safely dreaming before she slipped into bed herself.

Five images of his mother are all he has to offer Charlie. Five images, and attempts at describing her that never quite manage to capture who Grace really was. Charlie looks nothing like her, and at that Tommy is both relieved and mournful. He doesn’t think he could bear if it if Charlie’s hair was light instead of dark, but sometimes he cannot help but wish that it were so, if only he can pretend that the midnight conversations he had with Grace about their future children had become reality, not just a memory.  

 _Charles Fredrick. Margaret Helen. Kathleen Ada. William Michael._ Not so many children as John and Esme, but enough to ensure there was always noise in the house, always someone running through the halls in search of their siblings. 

But there is only Charlie. Charlie who no longer cries out for his mother at night, Charlie who holds Grace’s photographs so carefully in his hands, Charlie who laughs easily and is quick to smile. Charlie, who is more solemn than any boy his age has any right to be. Charlie, who sometimes is the only thing keeping Tommy from drinking himself into oblivion each and every night, the memory of how Grace sounded when she laughed, Mrs. Shelby at last, not as sharp as it used to be.

There is only Charlie, but he will be safe. He will grow into a better man than Tommy ever was, even before the tunnels, and he will never know how it feels to take a man’s life, how difficult it is to remove your skin of the stain.  

He had promised Grace – a wedding vow, she teased – and he will not fail her twice.  


End file.
